“Was this not Gods justice?” the repulsive creature had asked. “Didn’t Routbourg deserve to die for the horrible crimes he perpetrated? Not just my disfigurement, but for Frondizi, his wife, and four children, all of whom were innocent of any crime at all?”
But what of it? Who was Liebfreund to act for God? Or Ory? Or any of them? Amaury might have struck a whole man.
And what was more, even that was a lie. Liebfreund could have had Routbourg killed anytime he chose. Killing the Lutheran was not retribution but strategy, a ploy to clear the way for Amaury to make Routbourg’s journey in his place. Well, Amaury would indeed make a journey, but he would no longer let anyone choose his destinations. Not Liebfreund. Not Ory. Not his father.
Just as Amaury was hefting the sack to leave, there was a knock at the door. Probably his landlady on some transparent pretext to pry another coin out of him. When he coldly asked who was there, Madame La Framboise’s trill penetrated through the wood.
“Monsieur,” she called, “a surprise.”
Amaury jerked the door open. Madame La Framboise stood coyly before him, hands clasped in front of her, an expression of maternal satisfaction on her face. “A visitor,” she cooed, ignoring his scowl. She allowed a discreet smile to play across her narrow lips, then glanced to her left and made a quick gesture with her head. A small, delicate figure in a large hooded brown cloak moved sidelong into the doorway.
“Vivienne?”
The girl nodded shyly.
Amaury glared from one of the women to the other. Angry as he was, however, the memory of his hour with Vivienne had remained intoxicating. Still, it was in that hour that Geoffrey had been dismissed back to Paris and his meeting with Routbourg had been arranged by Hoess.
“I need to see you,” Vivienne said softly, not waiting for Amaury to speak. “It’s very urgent. Otherwise I never would have . . . ”
“Very well.” As much as Amaury tried to remain stolid, the swell of her breasts made his heart rush and the scent of her skin was in his nostrils. The words came out stiffly rather than curt.
As he moved aside to allow the girl to enter, Madame La Framboise blinked twice in rapid succession to acknowledge the dispensation she was providing in permitting a boarder to entertain a woman in her rooms. Amaury swung the door shut, leaving his landlady to scuttle away.
“I’m so relieved you’re safe.” Vivienne spoke just above a whisper. “We heard about Monsieur Routbourg at Madame Chouchou’s. The news is all over Paris. I knew that you had left with him.”
“Yes, I heard as well,” Amaury lied. He lifted his sack off the floor, a man in a hurry. “We had split up before he was attacked,” he lied.
“Oh. I didn’t know.” Vivienne made to move toward him, but then stopped.
“And how did you know where to find me?” Amaury demanded. He wanted to be closer to her, but would not be played for the fool twice.
“Madame Chouchou knew where you were staying. I don’t know how. Perhaps from Monsieur Hoess. When she saw how upset I was, she sent me to check to see that you were all right.”
“Madame Chouchou sent you?” She lies no better than I do, he thought.
Vivienne nodded, her eyes not leaving Amaury’s.
“Thank you. I’m fine.”
“I’m so pleased,” she said, a small, rueful smile making a brief appearance, then disappearing. “But there is another reason I came. I need to speak to you. As I said, a matter of great urgency. But I see you are on your way out.” Still she did not move to the door herself.
So, Amaury knew, here was the choice. He should leave and not wait to hear what fabrication she had been put up to by Hoess or Madame Chouchou. But Vivienne had the fascination of a sorceress.
“All right,” he grunted, “what is it?”
As she hesitated, Amaury suddenly knew what she was about to say. And it was not what he had been expecting.
“It concerns Giles,” she said.
Of course. It all fit now. “So it was you in the alley the night he died. You came upon the body then ran away.”
She stiffened. “How did you know?”
“Unimportant.” He was pleased to have surprised her. “What matters is that you were there. Did you see the man who stabbed him?”
“No. I arrived too late.”
“How did you know where he would be?”
“I didn’t. Not precisely. He told me that he was going to the bookshop, then afterward for a rendezvous nearby.”
“He was at the bookshop the day he died?”
“I can’t say for certain. Only that he intended to go there.”
“Do you know why he was killed?”
She shook her head.
“Then why were you looking for him?”
“I thought he might be in danger. He took such chances. I told him to be more careful, but he refused to listen.”
“Why did you think he would be in danger that night?”
“He told me he was running an errand. Something very important. For Monsieur Routbourg, I think. I had a . . . feeling. I’m not sure. But I knew something terrible might happen. I was trying to find Giles. To stop him. But I arrived too late. Now Monsieur Routbourg is dead as well. Almost certainly by the same hand.”
“Yes. Almost certainly. And last night, you were asked to . . . occupy me . . . to contrive to allow me to leave with Routbourg.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They only told me to . . . ” She looked away, appearing genuinely abashed. An abashed whore? Perhaps she lied better than he had thought.
“And who sent you here now? Hoess? And for what purpose?”
She shook her head. “Monsieur Hoess was as surprised to see me downstairs as you are now.”
“Why then?”
“Giles told me to contact you if anything happened to him.”
Amaury stiffened. Was it true?
“Giles died over a week ago. Why did you wait?”
“I wasn’t sure who to trust. I was afraid to expose myself, even to someone Giles told me was a friend. Then, last night, before the meeting, I overheard Monsieur Hoess giving your name to Monsieur Routbourg . . . that you would be arriving with Geoffrey Broussard.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me last night? When we were . . . alone?” “Giles spoke of you all the time, you know,” she replied, instead of answering the question. “He said you were the wisest man he had ever known.”
“He overstated.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m sure he was correct. I know a good deal about people. Men. I felt . . . feel . . . very safe with you.”
“Safe from what?”
“Giles was killed because of his activities for the Brotherhood. I will be risking the same fate.”
“You? How?”
“Henri Routbourg was to journey to Nérac.”
“He will be going to Nérac,” Liebfreund had said. “You will now go in his place. It will be child’s play to arrange.”
“I go nowherefor you.”
Liebfreund had emitted a raspy sigh. In profile, his noseless face appeared even more grotesque. “And the murder of your friend? Does it not to you matter that the man lying in the street had likely ordered it?”
“The only one I know of who has ordered a murder is you. ”
Liebfreund had become so calm as to be almost casual. “All the same, he is almost certainly responsible. ”
“I dont believe you. How can you possibly know that? Where is your proof?”
“The proof is in Nérac. You need only to travel there. ”
“Routbourg told me he was taking a trip,” Amaury said to Vivienne, “although he didn’t mention the destination.”
“It was Nérac. He had urgent business there.”
“But how would this put you at risk?”
“I was to go as well. Posing as his wife.”
“His wife?”
“Monsieur Routbourg told me
that the Inquisition would stop at nothing to apprehend a member of the Brotherhood. He said they had found a couple was less likely to arouse suspicion than a man traveling alone.”
“Why would you volunteer for such a task?”
She smiled. “It’s my opportunity.”
“For what?”
“A better life. To leave my current . . . profession. Forever. Did you think I became a whore for the joy of it?”
“No. Of course not.” In truth, Amaury had never considered why someone would choose such an iniquitous calling. He had always simply assumed it was a combination of greed and weak virtue.
“Will you help me then?”
Amaury toyed with the thongs of his sack, which still lay in his hand.
“Its not just that,” Vivienne pressed. “I believe we could learn about Giles’ murder there.”
“Why?”
“Giles told me he had come upon some rogue Lutheran sect. He said it was centered in Nérac. When I told him I had volunteered to accompany Monsieur Routbourg there, he asked me to observe closely when we arrived. When I asked what he wanted me to observe, he said I’d know when I encountered it. Whatever Giles hoped I would find, I’m certain you would be more fit to assess its import than I.”
“Even so, why would Routbourg’s cohorts trust me to go in his place?”
“Monsieur Routbourg was not going by choice. There was no one else in their group who could undertake the journey without being recognized. I think his friends would be eager to accept an offer from someone unknown to their enemies.”
Liebfreund and the girl telling exactly the same story. And Giles seemed to have been the source for both. Still, something was not right. Amaury felt at the edge of a vortex from which, if he did not escape now, there would be no further opportunity.
“I’m sorry, Vivienne. I would like to help you . . . ”
Vivienne reached into her cloak and withdrew a small packet. “Giles gave me this for you. In case something happened to him.”
Amaury opened the packet. Inside was a single piece of paper. On it was drawn a diagram.
On the back was a brief message. Two short sentences, written with a reverse slant in small, perfectly formed letters. Unmistakably from Giles.
Amaury stared at the remarkable drawing for some moments, then folded the paper and deposited it in his sack.
“Very well, Vivienne. I’ll go.”
The old man sat at his desk the sun streaming through the window; lighting the cluster of papers in front of him. He stared at the problem that had vexed him for years. It was almost a Greek paradox. How can a thing move backward and forward at the same time? Others had explained the anomaly, of course, but only through contrivance. He would do so with geometry and mathematical calculation.
Today he was especially frustrated. One needs continuity, and he could not retrieve his inspiration, hast week, at the moment he had felt himself on the verge of a breakthrough, a summons had arrived from Count Stefan. A physician was needed at Stefans home. His niece had taken ill. Shortness of breath and an intolerable pain in the bowel. The old man had been terribly fatigued—on clear nights, he got almost no sleep at all—but there was little choice but to accompany the servant who had arrived with Stefans message.
He arrived at the count’s castle after a days ride and was ushered immediately into the young girl’s bedroom. She was a tiny thing, about fifteen, obviously in pain, but even more in fear. The old man had suspected immediately what was the cause of her malady, so he shooed everyone but the girl’s maid from the room.
In moments, he knew he had been correct. The illness was not an illness at all. The girl’s corset had been laced extremely tight and, as soon as the maid loosened the bindings, the truth made itself apparent. The girl, who could now breathe easily, burst into tears.
She begged the old man not to tell her uncle. The count’s fury would be boundless, and he would stop at nothing to uncover the name of the culprit and then have the hapless lad executed most unpleasantly. The girl confided to the old man that her tutor, a young man of just twenty, was the father and, further, that they were very much in love. All she needed was time, the girl assured him, and she would find some way to persuade her uncle to allow them to marry.
The old man agreed not to tell the count. He told her not to lace her corset quite so tight, that no one would notice for some weeks yet.
But he did not have high hopes for the outcome. Affairs such as this always ended badly. The girl’s condition was certain to become known and it would render her unfit for the marriage of state that the count most certainly had in mind for her.
The old man had wanted to return immediately, but the count, still believing his niece’s condition to be an illness, insisted that the old man remain for three days. Now, after another day’s journey, the inspiration he had felt before his departure was lost. The problem once again seemed as insoluble as ever. How could something move forward and backward at the same time?
XII
Faubourg Saint-Germain, March 1, 1534
ONE HOUR BEFORE DAWN, a wagon filled with the wares of an ironmonger, pulled by a gray-muzzled dray horse, passed out of Paris at porte Saint-Germain. Amaury leaned forward, elbows on knees, loosely holding the reins. He was dressed in a worn jerkin, splattered hose, and torn shoes. Next to him, in a bonnet and flimsy shawl, sat Vivienne. Their journey to Nérac would take nine days.
As both Vivienne and Liebfreund had predicted, Amaury’s suggestion that he might be available to replace Routbourg had been greeted with eagerness. Perhaps too much eagerness. As he left the table after breakfast, Amaury remarked to Hoess that Routbourg’s murder appalled him. Purged him of any remaining loyalty he might have felt to Catholicism. Left him wondering what he might do to avenge the man’s death. “Wait, my friend,” Hoess had called after him. “Do you mean that?”
Now the wagon bounced over the rutted streets of Faubourg Saint-Germain, passing the walled market town of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In the bottom of the sack that held Amaury’s change of clothing was a packet of correspondence, wrapped in an innocuous-looking soiled oilcloth tied with a leather thong. Inside, Amaury was certain, was a communication the contents of which Ory, Liebfreund, and now he were desperate to know. The packet itself was secured on all sides with a ribbon set in a Bartholomew’s knot. The order in which the various ties and internal loops were fashioned was known only to the respondent and the recipient. If the packet was opened and then retied in any manner different from the original, detection would be simple and immediate.
Amaury rocked back and forth to the beat of the horse’s hooves. The old rough-stone abbey that gave the town its name loomed up as a shadow on his right. Already the air was clearer, scents of the coming spring replacing the musty cloud that seemed to hang perpetually over Paris.
Amaury removed Giles’ diagram from his tunic. He had recognized it instantly, of course, but this version was different. Why the circle with the dotted line? When he had asked Vivienne if Giles had explained what it was, she had replied, “A riddle.” Indeed it was. An irresistible riddle. Amaury had no doubt whatever that the dotted circle was tied to Giles’ murder. And the key to the puzzle was in Nérac.
As the sun rose, the wagon passed the series of towns that ringed Paris to the south and west before open country. The road was in excellent repair. Rutted perhaps, capable of turning into a stream of mud in a heavy rain, but clear, straight, and punctuated with stone bridges rather than those of flimsy wood. The king often took this route on his way to his château on the Loire, so a series of guardhouses had been placed just off the roadside.
As the sun began its trek across the sky, dew was transformed into a blanket of mist. Soon the mist vanished as well, and Amaury felt the early March sun warm his face and the fragrance of turned soil fill his nostrils. Cows roamed the fields, and dabs of crocus, purple and yellow, stretched off into the distance. There was some foot traffic on the road, but for the most part they
rode in solitude. He looked to Vivienne, sitting to his left, but she seemed lost in thought, content to bounce along to the rhythm of the road.
As they rode on, Amaury drifted back to the day in the field. Lying next to her. He fourteen, she twelve. Hélène. Hélène d’Artigny. His golden sprite growing into golden woman.
They were lying on their sides, facing each other, their heads resting on outstretched arms. “I have decided that we shall always be together,” she had mused idly, toying with the petals of a wildflower that grew from the ground between them. “Hélène and Amaury. Like Heloise and Abelard. Even the initials match.”
He reached out and twirled a bit of her hair around his finger. “Abelard was murdered.”
She giggled. Amaury’s heart beat faster at the sound. “We won’t do that part.”
“Your father will never approve,” he said. “Nor mine. I’m not even allowed through the front gate.”
“Oh, Amaury, don’t be so glum. You were sent here for me. I knew it the moment I saw you. I am telling you that I will make us always be together.”
“And you were waiting for me. You told me.”
“Yes. I remember. So do not doubt me now.”
“But you’re only a girl.”
She had shaken her head. “No matter. You will find, my dear Amaury, that in the end I always get what I want.” Then she had leaned over and kissed him, her lips on his. “Always.”
He had sworn to himself to love her forever. To have her with him every day of his life. Hélène. Hélène. She had become a part of him, as much as his hands, his heart, his brain. Love. More glorious than life itself.
Her betrothal had been announced the following year. Promised to an imbecile because a bastard would not do. The walks in the hills stopped after that. He sent her notes that were never acknowledged. She refused to see him alone, even to speak to him. He never touched her again. He had loved her so. Did he still? The ache from such a love might fade over time, but, like a scar from a great wound, never vanishes.
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